Was the Canaan of our hopes the country that we had pictured to ourselves? Contrary to our expectations, it did not look at all like a place our brethren had bought with their blood ten years before. It was simply a desolate wilderness, a deserted sand-plain, a boundless expanse of rolling country, a monotonous insipid canvas, with dark red and light gray all over. Compared with the detailed, variegated picture of Japan that we had been accustomed to, what a sense of untouched and unfinished carelessness! What a change of scene to see hundreds of natives swarm to the spot of our landing, with horses and wagons, to get their job! Were they men or animals? With ill-favored faces, they would whisper to each other and pass on. As knavish fellows they deserve anything but love, but as subjects of an ill-governed empire they certainly deserve pity. At first they dreaded the Japanese; they stared at us from a distance, but did not come near us; probably because they had been robbed of their possessions by the Russians, and their wives and daughters had been insulted by them. The Japanese army, from the very first, was extremely careful to be just and kind to the natives and encouraged them to pursue their daily work in peace. Consequently they soon began to be friendly with us and to welcome us eagerly. However, they are a race of men who would risk even their lives to make money, and would live in a pig-pen with ten thousand pieces of gold in their pockets. How our army suffered from the treachery of these money-grubbers will be told later on. “Ata, ata! Wo, wo!” This strange cry we constantly heard at the front—it is the natives’ way of driving horses and cows. Their skill in managing cattle and horses is far beyond ours. We could not help being struck with the manner in which the animals obeyed their orders; they would go to right or left at the sound of these signals, and would move as one’s own limbs without the slightest use of whips. The relation between these natives and their cattle and horses is like that between well-disciplined soldiers and their commanders; not the fear of whip and scolding, but a voluntary respect and submission, is the secret of military discipline and success. The fact that the Russian soldiers were lacking in this important factor became clear later by the testimony of the captives.